Antonio Gramsci was one of the founders of the Italian Communist Party and one of the most outstanding Marxist intellectuals of the last century.

His works and his thinking are still being studied and debated today, and his influence is still felt in political parties and cultural enterprises of all kinds.

In this article we will see a short biography of Antonio Gramsci , a summary description of his life and main works, as well as his contributions to Marxist theory.

Brief biography of Antonio Gramsci

Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937) was an Italian journalist and activist known and famous for developing the roles of culture and education within the economic, political and class theories of Marxism . Gramsci was born on the island of Sardinia in 1891 and grew up in poverty among the island’s peasants, and his experience of the class differences between Italians and mainland Sardinians and the negative treatment of Sardinian peasants by mainlanders shaped his intellectual and political mentality.

In 1911, Gramsci left Sardinia to study at the University of Turin in northern Italy and lived there while the city was being industrialized. He spent his time in Turin among socialists, Sardinian immigrants, and workers recruited from poor regions to staff urban factories.

In 1913, Gramsci joined the Italian Socialist Party . He did not complete his formal education, but was trained at the university as a Hegelian Marxist and studied intensively the interpretation of Karl Marx’s theory as a “philosophy of praxis” under Antonio Labriola. This Marxist approach focused on the development of class consciousness and the liberation of the working class through the process of struggle.

His life as a journalist, socialist activist and political prisoner

After leaving school, Antonio Gramsci wrote for socialist newspapers and rose through the ranks of the socialist party. He and the Italian socialists joined the ideas of Vladimir Lenin and the international communist organization known as the Third International . During this time of political activism, Gramsci advocated workers’ councils and labor strikes as methods for taking control of the means of production, controlled by the rich capitalists to the detriment of the working classes.

Finally, he helped found the Italian Communist Party to mobilize workers for their rights. Gramsci traveled to Vienna in 1923 and met Georg Lukács, a prominent Hungarian Marxist thinker and philosopher, as well as other Marxist and Communist intellectuals and activists who would shape his intellectual work. In 1926, Gramsci, then head of the Italian Communist Party, was imprisoned in Rome by the fascist regime of Benito Mussolini during his powerful campaign to end opposition politics.

Gramsci was sentenced to twenty years in prison but was released in 1934 due to his poor health . Most of his intellectual legacy was written in prison, and is known as The Prison Notebooks , where he reflects on some central issues for Marxism, such as the relations between structure and superstructure, between ideology and science, or between thought and political action.

Gramsci’s contributions to Marxist theory

Antonio Gramsci’s key intellectual contribution to Marxist theory was his elaboration of the social function of culture and its relationship to politics and the economic system. While Marx briefly discussed these issues in his works, Gramsci drew on Marx’s theoretical foundations to elaborate the fundamental role of political strategy in challenging the dominant relations in society, and the role of the state in regulating social life and maintaining the conditions necessary for capitalism.

Gramsci focused on understanding how culture and politics could inhibit or stimulate revolutionary change , that is, he focused on the political and cultural elements of power and domination (in addition to and along with the economic element). As such, Gramsci’s work is a response to the false prediction of Marx’s theory that revolution was inevitable, given the contradictions inherent in the capitalist system of production.

In his theory, Gramsci saw the state as an instrument of domination representing the interests of capital and the ruling class. He developed the concept of “cultural hegemony” to explain how the state achieves this, arguing that domination is largely achieved by a dominant ideology expressed through social institutions that socialize people to consent to the rule of the dominant group.

Gramsci further postulated that hegemonic beliefs cushion critical thinking and are therefore barriers to revolution. For him, educational institutions were one of the fundamental elements of cultural hegemony in modern Western society and he elaborated this idea in some of his essays, such as “The Formation of Intellectuals”.

Although he was influenced by Marxist thought, in his works Gramsci advocated a revolution in phases and more long-term than that envisioned by Marx. He advocated the cultivation of “organic intellectuals” from all classes and walks of life, who understood and reflected the worldviews of a diversity of people. He also criticized the role of “traditional intellectuals,” whose work reflected the worldview of the ruling class and thus facilitated cultural hegemony.

Gramsci advocated a “war of positions” in which the oppressed peoples would work to disrupt the hegemonic forces in the realm of politics and culture, while simultaneously overthrowing power through various maneuvers, and with broad participation of the masses in what would inevitably be a long, difficult road full of advances and setbacks, but after which, if political and cultural victory is achieved, it would be decisive and stable.

Bibliographic references:

  • Bates, T. R. (1975). Gramsci and the Theory of Hegemony. Journal of the History of Ideas, 351 – 366.
  • Femia, J. (1975). Hegemony and consciousness in the thought of Antonio Gramsci. Political studies, 23(1), 29 – 48.
  • Gramsci, A. (2003). Prison letters. Era Editions.